


Reliably Unreliable

by SaneCharlie



Category: Sentinels of the Multiverse (Card Game)
Genre: Comic Violence, Gen, Reference Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9178378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaneCharlie/pseuds/SaneCharlie
Summary: Pete Riske has new superpowers! But can he handle them? Is he really suited for a life of superheroism? And will anybody be able to stand working with him?





	

“Mr. Riske. I really do not see what all the fuss is about.” The Baron smiled, trying for disarming sincerity but only making it as far as veiled condescension. “I was quite sure we had afforded you every comfort. And with your employment prospects, I do feel that was a little better than anything else you were likely to get. Certainly,” he gestured around the burned rubble that had once been Pete’s apartment, “it is better than you seem to have here. Why would you run?”

Pete shrugged. “Look, it was great for a while, but even cable gets boring eventually if you’re a prisoner.”

“A _guest_ , Mr. Riske, an honoured guest. You may be sure that my prisoners do not receive all the pleasant benefits we offered to you. Regardless, what did you imagine you would accomplish by running away?”

At this, Pete looked legitimately confused. “Uh, my freedom, I guess?”

Baron Blade chuckled. “Overrated. And,” he gestured to his minions, “in this case, very temporary. Bring him, men.” The troops advanced on him, shock-batons at the ready.

Then there was a whistling sound from overhead, and a huge metal figure fell between them and their target.

The figure spoke with an appropriately robotic voice. “Baron Blade. The police have been notified of your presence. Surrender immediately.”

The Baron just scoffed. “The police? In Rook City? Ridiculous. Minions, destroy him!”

The troops moved in, jabbing with their shock batons, which did almost nothing against Bunker’s armour. The same could not be said in reverse – between the armoured hero’s swinging fists and his hail of munitions, the villain and his troops were driven away before Pete even really knew what was happening.

At last there was quiet (except for the transport helicopter circling overhead, and the whirring of the armoured suit) and Bunker turned to Pete. Naturally, faced with a towering, impassive metal superhero, he was a little intimidated, so he tried to look as harmless as possible and stuck out his hand.

“Hi there! Thanks for the rescue!”

“Don’t mention it.” Bunker shook his hand carefully, then there was a sudden spark of pain.

“Ouch!”

“What the…” the armoured man inspected his gauntlet, finding it suddenly damaged, bursting with tiny white-hot sparks. “How on earth did you do that?”

“Um,” said Pete, “I’m not sure? Sorry?”

“Hmm. Well, at least it looks like we know why Blade wanted you so badly. I think you’d better come with me.”

* * *

 

Pete wasn’t thrilled. He was in a lab, wired to electrodes that were giving a mysterious output, and he was pretty sure there was someone watching him from the other side of a two-way mirror – all of which meant he was in circumstances similar to those he’d been trying to escape not so long ago.

Dr. Stinson, PhD, whizzed around him checking on things, while a couple of lab techs and Lieutenant Tyler Vance – the man inside the Bunker suit – looked on in what might have been impassive comprehension or might have been bafflement. She looked closely at the monitor again and grumbled.

“Something wrong?” asked Tyler.

“Not certain. We’re getting some weird readings. Don’t worry,” she said to Pete, “it’s almost certainly nothing to do with you. Someone remind me to check on the systems later, see if we’re having Omnitron problems again. The big blue bot has messed with us too many times already.” She muttered a few more things under her breath – nothing Pete could hear, not really, but it sounded like it should be visually represented by a bunch of Greek letters and tiny numbers written in chalk.

He was finally impatient enough to speak when Bunker beat him to it. “So, Doc, what can you tell us?”

“So far? Not much. From the numbers I’d say he’s definitely gained powers of some kind, probably resilience and super-strength – it’ll take time to test how much exactly. Either way, this is a bad sign, if Blade’s close to being able to create superpowers on demand.”

That was alarming enough that Pete took an involuntary step backwards. His left foot clipped the monitor’s stand on the way, kicking the whole thing over, and it fell straight on top of him, screen first. The screen didn’t break, but it gave him one heck of a whack on the head. He shook it to clear some of the haze, shook a little too hard, and bumped the screen again, this time sending it scraping across the floor into the wall. It gave an electric ‘pop’ and then there was silence.

Everyone stood very still for a moment.

“Sorry,” said Pete.

Tachyon stifled a sigh, and plowed on. “Regardless, since Pete was his only success, losing him might be a major setback.”

 _A Setback, huh?_ thought Pete. _Works for me._

Bunker was looking around at the wreckage with a wry smile. “A setback for him, or for us?”

_Whatever, still works._

* * *

 

The tests seemed practically endless, and Setback was wired up to machines while running, sleeping, eating, sparring – and almost every time, he seemed to break something. He figured he just wasn’t used to his strength yet. He’d even managed to break a few plates while eating off them, before Dr. Stinson gave orders that he could only use paper ones from now on.

He did get bored very quickly, though, and it didn’t take him long to mention it. When he said it to lab techs, they looked vaguely sympathetic but did nothing, so he said it to Tachyon, and she looked thoughtful.

“Well,” she said, “you might not be a… _traditional_ superhero, but you’re certainly strong and resilient. Maybe we could use you.”

“Really? Great!” He gave a little jump for joy, jumped slightly too high, and hit the ceiling, somehow breaking the embedded light.

“Uh…sorry.”

By this point, Tachyon didn’t even blink. “Next time something comes up, I’ll let you know, maybe we’ll bring you along.”

An alarm sounded from somewhere within the tower.

She grimaced, looked at Setback, and said, “Well, no time like the present. Come on!”

* * *

 

Pete followed Tachyon down the hallway, doing his best to keep up. There was a flash and a crackling noise from ahead, and she said “Wait here,” and before he could respond she was gone, and then she was back again before he could slow down.

“Re-Volt,” she said, “an electric-powered supervillain. Hasn’t attacked here before but he likes stealing things and we have a lot of high-tech stuff so it was probably only a matter of time. Your powers, you said Blade was trying to make something like Legacy, right?”

He nodded. “Ye-“

“Great, then you should be able to take a decent shock. The plan is, you distract him, I put him down. Easy as pi. Ready?”

He wasn’t totally sure if he nodded or not, but she seemed to take it as one. “Great, let’s go!”

* * *

 

Re-Volt was enjoying himself – he’d torn a large power conduit from the wall, and was recharging from it, the blue-hot energy powering into his body and sending arcs everywhere. The noise was incredible, but he still noticed when the door opened and two figures stepped in.

“ **Ah, the great Tachyon! I had hoped you would show your face – I have longed to test myself against someone of your power! Our battle will be incredible! And** …” he paused, confused, “a civilian? Really, you brought a civilian along? Isn’t that a bit irresponsible?”

“Hey! I’m Setback,” shouted Pete, incensed, “and I’m here to dis- uh, to defeat you!”

“Oh really?” A sneer. “Well, **try this, hero!** ”

The villain sent an enormous blast at the pair. Faster than blinking, Tachyon was out of the way. Setback, on the other hand…was not. His brown hair was much frizzier than usual, and his eyes were glazed.

Re-Volt had his attention elsewhere. “ **I had heard you were quick! I’m impressed! But can you move as quick as lightning?** ” Another blast crossed the little room.

When it had passed, Tachyon was standing just a little to the side, buffing her nails on her costume. “Actually…yeah. Yeah I can.”

Re-Volt didn’t have a snappy answer for that, and settled for shooting out another blast of electricity. Tachyon wasn’t just unruffled, she seemed entertained.

“Hey, by all means keep doing that, I love it when a supervillain just has no clue.”

“Fine then! If I can’t hit you,” he glared around at the room, “there must be something valuable here I can destroy! Hah!”

Lightning scoured the ceiling, and a couple of things burst into showers of sparks or slow flames.

“Right then, youwanttoplayhardball, timetogotoslAARGH!”

Re-Volt staggered back from her punch, but Tachyon was much worse-off. Electricity arced off her, earthing itself on the ground, and she lay twitching. He stared down and chuckled.

“ **Not so funny now, are we hero? A pity you weren’t more of a challenge. Still, say goodnight!** ”

He gathered his energy, raised his hand – and found it gripped tightly by somebody’s fist.

Setback grinned at him through the pain, as lightning shot around his fist and up his arm. His hair looked ridiculous, and his clothes were scorched, but he was still standing strong.

“Forgot about me, didn’t you? Now, what was it you wanted me to say…oh yeah! Goodnight!”

A single punch laid the villain out on the floor.

* * *

 

“Hey. Hey wake up.”

“Whuh?” Meredith blinked, stared up at Setback. “What happened?”

“You hit Re-Volt, and he shocked you. You’ve only been out for a minute or so.”

She didn’t seem much comforted. “Hmph. Been a while since anyone got the drop on me like that.” A quick glance over, just to confirm that he was still there, lying unconscious on the floor.

“Why do you think he came?”

“Ah, who knows. These idiots, they hear any old press release about new advances, they figure it must mean there’s something here worth stealing. Which actually is true sometimes,” she shrugged, “but it’s hardly ever worth trying to fight me for it.”

She got up, stretched, found a kink in her neck and rubbed it away. “Well, at least you got a good first outing. How’d you like being a superhero?”

“Great!” He was grinning hard enough to hurt his face. Tachyon smiled back.

“Well, if you like it that much, we’ll have to do it again. But first, I think we need to do something about your outfit.”

* * *

 

In Tachyon’s opinion, Setback looked more like a bumblebee than a superhero, but he liked the costume anyway. At least she’d been able to convince him not to have a cape – _capes are only for superheroes who fly_ , she’d said, and he hadn’t been able to do that. Although he had tried, and had managed to bruise himself pretty badly while doing so.

Each time they went into a fight, she watched him, to see how he did. The results were extremely mixed. He managed to take down Vyktor almost by accident, but caught fire while doing so. He beat a couple of Citizens quite handily, and then tripped, fell on his face, and passed out. And as for his first meeting with the Revenant…well, that one they would just agree not to talk about.

All in all, he was effective enough, but she didn’t know if anyone would ever want to work with him.

* * *

 

As Tachyon returned to the Freedom Tower from a press conference for Project Lambda, her latest terribly-exciting technological advance, she met Absolute Zero at the doorway. It was hard to tell, under the cryo-suit, but he didn’t seem happy.

“What’s up?”

“We need to talk about Setback. And how he needs to go.”

“Really, Ryan? I thought you were starting to like him.”

“I think you might be mixing him up with the kid. I’ve almost forgiven her for turning a bit of my suit into a robot that one time. No, this guy I don’t like.”

“So we shouldn’t let people be heroes if you don’t like them? I don’t know if that gives us a lot of potential recruits, you’re pretty ornery.”

She could just about hear him rolling his eyes at her. “That’s not it and you know it. I just think that whenever we go out there, we need to be an effective team. Setback is a well-named liability, and you know it.”

“I think he’s been performing rather well.”

“Are you talking about when he busted up the Revenant, or when he broke my suit doing it? Because I wasn’t that pleased with the second bit. I wouldn’t have thought you were, either, you were fixing it up for like a day and a half.”

“It gave me time to think about things. I had a couple of ideas for upgrading the Tower! Really fun stuff. I was thinking we could add a low-level gravitronic scanning-”

“Sure, whatever. All I saying is I don’t think we need him. What with your brains, Bunker’s brawn, and my razor-sharp wit, there’s not a lot we can’t deal with. Let the Rook City crowd have him, I’m sure they’d love his awkward charm and stupid hair. And if they don’t, Amanda can always just shoot him.”

“Just trust me, there’s more to Setback than meets the eye. Chill out, Ryan.”

He gave her a pointed look – something he was surprisingly good at, in spite of the translucent visor. “Hey, I make the cold-related puns around here. If you start moving in on that, it throws off our whole dynamic. I’ll have to go back to being coldly aloof or something, nobody wants that.”

Tachyon grinned. “Of course not.”

* * *

 

She led Setback into the lab and started strategically attaching electrodes.

“We’re just going to run a couple more tests, okay? Nothing you should be worried about, so just try and relax.”

Setback nodded, and picked something up from the table. It slipped out of his fingers, and he made a quick grab for it, only succeeding in knocking it into the edge of the table, where it shattered. He winced. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, just don’t touch anything else-“

Her goggles chirped, and pulled up a feed from one of the security cameras – a red blur was making its way into her labs. She smirked.

“Friction. Of course.”

“Friction?” asked Setback. “Isn’t that your nemesis?”

“She is not my – never mind, just stay here stay still don’ttouchanythingIgottago!”

* * *

 

Down in the labs, a red blur was breaking into the secure vault holding Project Lambda, when a white blur whizzed up and almost knocked the first one down. The red blur became a red-clad supervillain, and glared.

“Tachyon,” she said.

“Friction.”

“Been a while.”

“Not long enough.”

“You come here to fight me?”

“Did you come here to steal Project Lambda?”

Friction smirked, completely unashamed. “Yes I did. If you want I’ll arm-wrestle you for it.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ve got some bad news – Lambda doesn’t exist. I made it up.”

The supervillain just rolled her eyes. “Of course it exists, you went on the TV saying it exists. If it doesn’t, what was the interview for?”

“It’s nice to see you’re as smart as you ever were. See, I needed a supervillain to help me test a theory, so I made up some bait and,” she struck a pose, “ta-dah! Here you are!”

If the idea that Meredith had been lying wasn’t plausible, the idea of her doing it just to mess with her nemesis seemed to do the trick. Friction scowled. “In that case, I’ll just be leaving the way I came.”

“Oh, I really don’t think you will.”

“And how are you planning to stop me?”

Tachyon grinned and held up a finger. “Wait for it…”

There was a pregnant pause, and Friction scowled.

“Wait for wh-“

The ceiling fell in.

“Wow,” said Tachyon, “what a crazy random happenstance.”

She sauntered over to the pile of rubble, from which two sets of groans were uttering. Setback was the one lying on top, and he looked slightly dazed and very ashamed of himself. Friction was somewhere beneath, chunks of concrete lying all around and across her.

“Sorry, Dr. Stinson, I was trying to be good and quiet like you told me, but then I got an itch and I had to scratch, and I accidentally bumped this thing so I tried to catch it before it fell over but I tripped and-“

“Don’t worry about it,” she interrupted. “Believe it or not, you did great. Look, you caught the bad guy.”

“I did?” He looked, and realised for the first time that the pile he was lying in included a semi-conscious supervillain. “Oh hey, I did! Nice! So, uh…are we taking her to prison now?”

“Please, I have security staff for that. Which means we get to have more of a chat about your powers. And I think we might have been underestimating you...”

“Kill…you…” mumbled Friction.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Come on, Setback, right this way.”

They wandered off down the hall together, leaving the villain to be dealt with.

“So you think I have cooler powers?”

“I do, and so I think your costume might be missing a little something. How do you feel about dice?”

**Author's Note:**

> Why yes, I DID write this just to make that Neil Patrick Harris reference!
> 
> Also, it turns out (according to the Letters Page podcast) that the Freedom Tower was only built after Vengeance Baron Blade appeared and destroyed the original F5 HQ. So this story has some minor canonicity issues. Oh well. Don't let it bother you.


End file.
